skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Okay, so I agree that Colin's exam might be a bit too specific and that he might have phrased certain things poorly, i.e. "lucky enough to be working within a narrow area where your deficit doesn't matter". I think either his experiment will help him discover that "luck" (i.e. statistical distribution) doesn't lean the way he assumed or -- and this is more likely -- he'll obtain biased results because a lot of people will refrain from sending bad results.

That being said, I honestly prefer being judged by someone as accomplished as Colin Percival than hiding behind the attitude that we should not judge other people's abilities.

Let's face it, there's an abundance of downright bad and mediocre programmers. There aren't that many top-notch programmers, although each of us would love to think we're among that small group. This is what motivates us to speak out against any attempt to measure and assess abilities, especially if such an attempt is likely to rank us low.

I'm not ashamed to admit that, so far, I haven't been able to formulate an answer to more than 5 questions out of 10 he posted so far. While I freely admit that I don't consider myself to be a programmer in Colin's league, I think that's really beside the point here.

My knowledge is cached: what I work with all the time is easier to recall; what I've worked with or read about, but I'm not using all the time is not as easy; and, of course, there's a ton of things I don't know, have never worked with or read about. This means that I don't feel confident talking about B-trees without consulting Internet, but since I read about them previously, I do remember that they're a form of search trees and that databases use them (or their variations) a lot.

What's the point of this whole rant? Let's bottom-line it. I'm probably not as good as Colin overall and I'm definitely not as good as he is at what he, specifically, does. That doesn't mean I should feel threatened by his exam. Nor does it mean it has no validity whatsoever. Nor does it mean that Colin is "difficult to work with" or fits any specific personality type.

Those two claims about Colin's personality and intentions are what really bothered me about your reaction. I'm not a fan of straightforward ad-hominems, but I detest veiled ones even more.
> But if this app gets removed after I upgrade, that will be devastating.

You can grab the app now and still be able to use it after it's pulled. Just save the .ipa and sync it over.

What you'll find even more devastating is that whilst this app uses the Google map tiles, the search isn't any better than Apple's.
What is a "green" drive?
Einstein: The word God is the product of human weakness
"require('memory')" gives you back a JS module that's written in LLJS (http://git.io/vHeH2g). It exports several typed array views and a few functions like malloc() / free(). It's all JavaScript, nothing native.
Capitalism doesn't guarantee that things are priced in order of production costs. In particular, after these goods were produced, the ongoing inventory situation for hard drives had a wrench thrown into the works. One would hope the market then allocated a once-commodity component efficiently, such that users with the highest need for hard drives received them and users with less need made the decision to purchase hard drives later. For social (non-market) reasons, some people who sold hard drives decided to essentially sell hard drives below their market value, with rationing, to a) maintain availability of supply for a market segment with a relatively low need for hard drives while b) avoiding selling those hard drives into a market segment with a relatively high need for hard drives.

Economics (not quite capitalism) says that if you attempt to replace a market with a rationing system, you will get a market anyhow, because markets are emergent features of reality and as soon as you have multiple agents with differing values for the same goods trade happens. (Capitalism would add "... and that's a good thing!") Rationing will generally result in there being an artificial consumer surplus created in the system versus a functioning market, and that consumer surplus will generally be captured by a market-maker rather than either any of the intended beneficiaries of the rationing scheme or the entity who has the product requiring rationing in the first place.

In the absence of a rationing scheme, a) Backblaze would have had as many drives as it wished to purchase at the market price (slightly lower than the price they think is unconscionable in their normal channels) and b) most home users of hard drives would have been unable to source new hard drives at rates they were willing to pay, and would have turned to substitutes like "use refurbished hard drives", "decrease consumption of hard drive space", and "defer hard drive purchases."
"The author never judges"

yes you did...
Also see http://www.devthought.com/2012/01/18/an-object-is-not-a-hash... from earlier about some pitfalls that you might not immediately consider.

(HN Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4629544)
Would anyone use a code snippet community that doesn't suck?
Is there a market for a code snippet community/repository that doesn't suck?

Would you be interested?

Features including embed snippets posted onto external site, search for code snippets, get feedback on code etc...
"Virtual" Synthetic Biology + DNA from "Outerspace" + Ruby = Nyan Cat S2
What is the difference between DNA and programming languages?

What is the difference between DNA and poetry?

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research."

A little tribute to "Why".
Corporations provide predefined guidance on how multiple business partners share risks, rewards, liabilities and profits, allowing larger enterprises than individuals alone might be able to afford or risk.

What you describe is closer to an oligarchy or plutocracy, with corporate indirection acting as a shield to scrutiny, rather than a shield from unfettered associative liability.

But yes, capitalism is good for consumers (and capitalists and entrepreneurs).
So Backblaze is facing a huge increase in drive failure rates in the near future? That's reassuring.
The link to Pakistan. Doing something of significance as a woman is more impressive over there due to the ideas of equality over there being somewhat backwards in the view of us liberal types.

Sexual inequality isn't just an injustice of the commons over there - it is both the letter of the law and the spirit of the law in many (though certainly not all, it should be said) parts of the middle east.

If she were protesting/blogging/what-ever in Moscow, London or New York then you might well be right to question the significance of gender - but not in this case IMO.
Outside the Valley, people would hear this and say, "get a job."
Nearly all of the web crashes my iPhone 3G.
That's the spirit! I don't understand why people get so defensive.

I have a BS and a master's degree in CS and I didn't know about MESI cache coherence. And I've never run into it in 7+ years of professional experience. But that doesn't mean it's a useless question. I don't feel compelled to learn all about it right now, but at least I'll get acquainted with the Wikipedia-level facts. One day I might study it further.
We're working on it....
Personally, I recommend running a "friends and family" test prior to the launch. Get some people you know to come in (perhaps bring their laptops) and all log on and use the system for an hour. Ask them to try to crash it. It won't simulate 100 users (unless you have LOTS of friends), but it WILL catch some things that load-test scripts won't catch.
For double quotes you can use curly braces instead of concatenation. $foo = "I like {$hacker['news']}"; depending on how you want it evaluated you can drop the dollar sign on the outside of the curly brackets as well.
No - It doesn't look like Googles DNS servers have been hacked.

It looks like either the IEDR (the guys who manage .ie) have been hacked, or, either Google or eMarkmonitor Inc (whoever they are) had their password for the IEDR systems compromised.
Agree. This is just speculation, but JavaScript classes also seem like they could be easy to mess up, particularly for a beginner web developer.

I think there's a lesson from C and C++: don't add complexity unless it's absolutely necessary.
How to hire product managers
The Syndicate: Tools & Workflow for Running 1-man Sponsorship Network
it seems like all you have to do is convince you friends to install the app and set locations / status they want to share and the app ( uses geo fencing ? ) updates the status for them and you when they enter those areas.
Well said, but I'm still not inclined to send him my non-answers so that I can deliberately enjoy the feeling of inadequacy.
Discovery Channel Crashes a Jet Plane — on Purpose
Elon Musk on SpaceX, Tesla, and Why Space Solar Power Must Die
HTML5 Contre Jour conversion: Behind the Scenes
Bob Lutz and Elon Musk Interview - Contrasting Philosophies [video]
I am waiting for a 'boot to servo'.... B2S
No. They can be interesting things to read about, and knowing a little about the themes each question comes from (i.e. how does a processor cache work) will make you a better programmer, but don't worry about cramming your head with trivia such as "what does MESI stand for?"
>Paul Ekman...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17221309

"M. O'Sullivan and P. Ekman (2004) claim to have discovered 29 wizards of deception detection. The present commentary offers a statistical critique of the evidence for this claim. Analyses reveal that chance can explain results that the authors attribute to wizardry..."
I second this. I was diagnosed as an adult (two years after college). I'm now thirty.

If you are not hyperactive as a child, I feel it's very rare that you will get diagnosed. People forgot these days there is just the attention-deficit-disorder without the hyper-activity.

Call your general physician.
Show HN: ViewStat - Share your Google Analytics Data privately
I believe you're missing a few chars in the hash. Should be http://youtube.com/embed/vkJ5ItzEq3M, or for the full youtube page: http://youtube.com/watch?v=vkJ5ItzEq3M
Those are loss leaders. Much like the 29c/lb turkey at Thanksgiving, or the $29 laptops the day after, these deals are designed to get consumers into the store or website, so each will buy 1 or 2 and several other items and accessories. High-margin accessories like USB cables and wireless mice, or potatoes and stuffing, easily offset those loss leaders.

The entire point of the 2 item limit on deals like those is to prevent companies from doing exactly what Backblaze has done. By snapping up all of these deals, they're reducing the number available for consumer purchase, which impacts the revenues of these big-box retailers. Basically, Backblaze absorbed the (economic) consumer and retailer surpluses for HDDs in the Bay area and passed it on to their consumers.
It looks like the working URL is https://www.google.com.bo/

Found that out thanks to the technical details in Firefox's SSL error screen, where it says:

"www.google.bo uses an invalid security certificate.

"The certificate is only valid for the following names:
google.com , .google.com , .youtube.com , youtube.com , .youtube-nocookie.com , youtu.be , .ytimg.com , .android.com , android.com , .googlecommerce.com , googlecommerce.com , .url.google.com , .urchin.com , urchin.com , .google-analytics.com , google-analytics.com , .cloud.google.com , goo.gl , g.co , .gstatic.com , .google.ac , ..." and then goes on to list an enormous number of localized Google domains.
I don't think the facts support your position at all.

For starters, there's a lot of biomedical entrepreneurial technology work done outside of these two area.

Or look at the mini-mill revolution in steel production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimill).

Those are just two examples where the state of the art is being pushed hard. Less technologically advanced (often disruptive innovations (which mini-mills sort of are due to their feedstocks vs. equipment)) happen all over the place, I could dig up a bunch of examples in firearms, especially accessories (e.g. EOTech in Ann Arbor, Michigan). Or my parents in the early '80s when consumer use of C-band transmissions took off (for people in areas not served by cable companies; this is now down in the K-band by Direct TV and Dish):

They first helped the first company to develop remote control systems that would move your dish from satellite to satellite. One eventual extension of this or spinoff was small (e.g. 4 feet) dishes that would fold down for travel, e.g you could put one on top of your RV.

But the more interesting work was in LNBs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_noise_block-downconverter), which combine a low noise amplifier with down conversion for easy signal transmission to the receiver inside the home. This was fairly advanced stuff for the era, the usual analog stuff, surface mount construction way before it was (widely) used in computers, they'd put them in a freezer and bake them, etc.

All done in the deepest of Red State SW Missouri, in the Joplin area.

There's lots more entrepreneurial stuff my family did from this location, that's just one of the the highest tech examples.

Also look at where US job growth comes from in modern times. Smaller companies that were startups, not big established companies.
How much do Google and Facebook profit from your data?
it's also funny that I can't think of any IM services that are making money.. or rather I have no idea how they make money.

however it seems like with geo fencing and a willingness to share your address book with a new service it can do all the work for you, so it might be useful, but profitable? without selling contact info i don't get. ads in the status screen?
The Landlord and Tenant act is the relevant law, and doesn't make any distinction between short term and long term sublets. You say you are subletting, and the landlord can refuse only with a compelling reason. There is nothing special liability wise, you are still liable for damages because you are still the one leasing the apartment.
For the deeply confused, what happened and why'd it happen so quick?
While we're waiting for the weather to clear, you can watch nicely edited footage of Kittinger's 1960 record of 100,000 feet; it's at the start of the Boards of Canada video for Dayvan Cowboy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2zKARkpDW4
What made Alexander the Great so “Great” anyway?
Traditional Offices Kill Creativity
To Keep Passwords Safe from Hackers, Just Break Them into Bits
SurveyMonkey lawyers ask PopSurvey to stop using monkeys in ads. Yes, really.
How-To with RavenDB and DataTables.Net
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/ulfar/cuba/paper/

Any language could. Javascript's ubiquity is just an accident of history. Nobody planned for it to be this way. It's not even the best way.

Why not a C applet in the browser with access to native hardware? Let the OS handle access to memory and system call interception. Why not CL? Or Python? Or anything else? Why do we have to let JS continue to be the de facto language and tack on all of these monstrosities upon it?
In this case the breach may be very obvious - but Apple's review process is not about compliance with third-party TOS.
Except that it requires technical skills to know that you need it. Your average joe off the street can have all the "common sense" in the world and still wouldn't know the risks involved.
A lot of people say they want a bytecode for the web. The problem is, bytecode vs text is just an encoding issue, and it's practically insignificant. It's a platform either way, and the real issues are what services the platform will provide.

For example, NaCl doesn't provide Garbage Collection (GC) last I checked. Applications can link in GC libraries for themselves, however that's more code for clients to download, and it may mean that the GC can't do all the low-level things that modern GCs do to get good performance. Is this an acceptable tradeoff for the web? I believe questions like this one are the important ones.
Implementing such system is a very tough call, actually. As complexity of your application increases, you stop understanding what happens when. The arguments for and against pub/sub callbacks are basically the same as with rails Observers and Sweepers.

I personally felt that their original code was not that bad.
I really wish people wouldn't play random, unexpected sound effects from their websites. Now my entire office thinks I was playing Super Mario Bros.
I thought that the bipartite graph algorithm question was the best so far. It was a question that, in addition to remembering what a bipartite graph is, required a little bit of thinking instead of just rote memorization (if you know what a bipartite graph is you can come up with the algorithm on your own -- no need to memorize that). Question #2 in this set is also pretty good.
Airlines have long term fuel contracts to smooth out the short term price changes, but beyond that they just pass it on to consumers.

e.g. http://www.delta.com/business_programs_services/delta_cargo/... the first column is the fuel surcharge that floats with fuel prices.

The Backblaze article clearly said that paying more for drives and passing it on the customers was an option. They just found a better one. They didn't mention it, but just losing money for a while is also a reasonable option if you don't want to antagonize your customers.
Identify prepaid-mobil users by geolocation and video-surveillance
Ask HN: Review my startup, TeamDoList.com
I created TeamDoList.com to scratch my own itch. I was working on a project with 3 other people and we started managing our tasks through email! This got tedious and the thread quickly grew to 78 emails. So, I set out to create TeamDoList.com to solve that need. TeamDoList.com allows you to create ad-hoc to-do lists and share them with anyone through a URL.

http://TeamDoList.com

Now, I need to evaluate my value hypothesis, namely, whether this is useful for teams to manage tasks.

So, would you use this personally? How about for your team? That's the main question I have. What additional features would you need to make this useful to you? Do you see a use I haven't thought of (e.g. shopping list management)?

Also, any suggestions of how I might be able to monetize this?

Thank you very much for your feedback.

Also, I'm kind of new to HN, so I hope I'm not doing anything wrong on here.
Their execution was poor. Start by depleting SF and then look elsewhere? Short-sighted at best.

They should have moved quickly before Best Buy/Costco implemented constraints that should have been anticipated. During one weekend, via train or one-way flights, employees could have been mobilized to cities across the US. Utilizing USPS flat rate boxes or low-cost equivalent, hard drives could have been shipped back to HQ en masse. Three days, disaster is over.

I give them a C- on execution.
I mostly agree with this. That's why I asked about GP's motivation.

I suspect, though, without any actual data to back this up, that the drives that go into (low-cost) external HDD enclosures have lower MTBF ratings than the desktop-oriented internal drives. I think that the usage pattern for an external HDD is very different in terms of longevity in operation than desktop hard drives (and these have lower guarantees than eg. server-grade SATA drives).

If I was a manufacturer of such enclosures I'd be willing to buy cheaper drives with lower promised MTBF for embedding them in enclosures that stay off most of the time.

So, even if they're the same, I guess the manufacturer performs some tests and sells drives that fail some non-critical ones at a lower price (pretty much what Intel and AMD do with their chips - those that can't sustain the highest frequencies are downgraded to clock rates that are stable).

edit: The comment from @dsr_ tends to support my hypothesis, although I haven't looked at the differences in guarantees of external enclosures, it's true that internal desktop HDDs can have up to 5 years of guarantee (i.e. WD's Black series has a 5 years guarantee).
FTA: "The Supreme Court took up the case against the advice of the Obama administration, which said the Federal Circuit reached the right conclusion in the case."

Is there any doubt who's side the president is on in this matter?
Let us not forget that running servers at 100% CPU/Memory/Network IO (whatever) is bad too. Sudden spikes or a machine crashing will kill your service.
Windows 8 isn’t as scary as the Internet would lead you to believe
I found the article misleading as well ... if an engine was shut down, you'd assume (with some margin of error) that the remaining 8 engines would fire 9/8th as long to provide the same total thrust and would therefore burn about as much propellant as the original 9 engines.
This is from the a section on custom iterators in the related blog post (https://brendaneich.com/2012/10/harmony-of-dreams-come-true/):

"We require opt-in to avoid future-hostility against custom iterators for collection objects. Such objects probably do not want any kind of general property iterator default, which if left on Object.prototype, might be object-detected and prevent installation of the correct custom iterator factory."

I can see the sense in that but I find all the little caveats in JS are one of it's weaknesses which makes me dislike this idea. Am I wrong to think they should have just put in a default iterator but made it easy to spot it so that you could replace it with a custom iterator where appropriate?
I have to say I agree with Survey Monkey in this case. What PopSurvey is doing is bad and you should feel bad as well.
The problem of describing a problem should be simpler than the solving of the problem.

Thus, needing a simpler description of a problem should not be an impediment to actually solving the problem.
Only a small fraction of orbital energy ends up burning the heat shield, most of it simply heats the air and creates a downdraft / wake.
For a crew mission, yes the mission would be aborted and the Dragon launch abort thrusters would fire getting them away from the rocket as fast as possible and deploy a parachute where they would land in the ocean.
> Since mid-September, twenty of the name servers have been running the new software and except for a bit of trouble on i386 (32-bit) and low-memory systems, it's been running very smoothly.

So is http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=909 a real-world problem?
in many (though certainly not all, it should be said) parts of the middle east

Can you elaborate, with specific examples, of which parts of the middle east have gender equality, or some approximation thereof?
Nobel Prizes: Is there a secret formula to winning one?
Thiago Caires on Biomedical Technology & Robot Evolution.
Good point.

It doesn't explain everything however: The top 2% (or is it 0.2%?) pay less than 10% taxes. Direct income tax alone is supposed to approach 50% for those incomes.
I don't think it's fair to say that all of the skills are aimed at manipulation through means of social interaction.

There's nothing particularly wrong with empathy, it's all about connecting with people and building a better understanding through feeling. Unfortunately numerous self-help book titles often make it seem as if this is a hack, or a manipulation, in its essence though I feel that it's not.
How about they expel those who used the solutions as well?